With rapid development of touch sensing technology, many electronic devices such as mobile phones, notebook computers or tablet computers take advantage of touch devices to provide intuitive operation and easy human-machine interface. These electronic devices hugely enter modern lives and great business opportunities are created. There are two known touch sensing technologies, i.e. capacitive sensing and resistive sensing.
For capacitive sensing, when the touch device is touched with a human finger or a conductive object, a capacitor is temporarily formed on the electrode corresponding to the touched position. Therefore, equivalent capacitance of the corresponding electrode changes. A sensor circuit can determine the touched position on the touch device according to the equivalent capacitance change of the corresponding electrode.
For resistive sensing, when an object such as a human finger or a stylus presses down onto a surface of the touch device, the upper electrode and the lower electrode are electrically connected at the pressed position so that the electrodes behave as a voltage divider circuit. Therefore, the sensor circuit can determine the pressed position on the touch device according to the voltage change of the upper electrode and the lower electrode.
Since large-area flat-panel display gains popularity now and touch sensing technology is widely used as the most friendly human-machine interface, there is an increased demand for large-area touch display these days. In a manufacturing process of a conventional touch display, a touch panel and a display module are separately produced and then the touch panel is laminated on or attached to the display module. The touch panel and the display module are controlled by two separate and independent chips without effective communication therebetween. Therefore, the application of the touch display is limited.
The conventional touch display can not cooperate with various electronic devices. For example, if a touch display is designed for personal computers, the dedicated touch display only supports personal computers with specific operating system (OS). The touch panel laminated on the dedicated touch display is just viewed as an additional input device other than a mouse or keyboard. Hence, the touch display just functions to display images (with the display module) and transmit touch signals in response to user touch operations to the personal computer (with the touch panel). Through the touch display, interaction between the user and the personal computer is still not satisfied.
Therefore, a novel touch display with improved interactive function is desired.